Since the advent of the computer age, hardware and software systems have been developed for allowing users to efficiently enter and manipulate text and data that is displayed on a computer-generated display. In the early days of computing, users were primarily restricted to manipulating displayed text and data through a variety of keyboard strokes. The advent of mousing devices, including keyboard touch pads, gave users enhanced access to displayed data by allowing users to freely move a mouse pointer or cursor about displayed information for selecting data for manipulation or input. Recently, a variety of pen and ink systems have been developed that allow users to select and manipulate displayed text and data, as well as allow users to write electronically in free-form fashion by touching an electronic pen to the computer display screen.
Many modern computer systems are hybrids between tablets allowing only pen input and traditional computers allowing only keyboard or mouse input. Such hybrid systems allow data input and manipulation via keyboards, mousing devices, and electronic pen devices. Among the data input and manipulation enabled by such systems is highlighting. That is, many such systems allow mousing devices or electronic pens to act as highlighting pens so that a user may highlight text or images of an electronic document by dragging a mouse cursor or electronic pen tip across desired text and images. Unfortunately, prior systems do not account for the varying sizes of typed text, handwritten text or images. For example, a document may contain typed text that varies in font size, handwritten text of various sizes and images of varying sizes. If the user desires that the highlighter color height match the height of the text or images to be highlighted, the user must manually change the cursor height for the mouse cursor or electronic pen for each text or image selection to be highlighted. Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system for automatically adjusting the cursor height for electronic highlighters to a desirable height relative to typed or handwritten text or images to be highlighted. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.